In barns and other structures utilized to house animals of various types, windows are necessary in order allow ventilation of the structure, and in specific situations to enable the animal to access the exterior of the structure. With specific regard to larger animals, such as horses, these windows can provide the horse with the ability to extend its head out of the window.
For animals who spend any time in a barn, light and proper ventilation are important factors in keeping those animals healthy. Most animals do best when living as close as possible to their natural outside habitat, as they are not used to being confined. For their mental well-being, the ability to see what is going on outside is important.
It is not always practical to keep animals outside, especially in northern climates. In the case of horses, expensive show or race horses must spend quite a lot of time in their stalls. In a situation where each horse is housed in an individual stall within the barn, good ventilation and light becomes paramount.
Many modern barns use plastic light panels which run the length of the barn wall just under the roofline. To augment this, skylights are placed in the roof over the center aisle to provide more daylight. Ventilation is provided by using ceiling fans and opening the end doors of the barn. The horse never sees the real world until he is led outside.
Other barns have individual windows for each stall which can be opened by various methods, either sliding one panel behind another or pushing out or pulling in. Often, the windows are left shut because they are painted shut, or because the windows have grills or mesh in front of them which necessitates the windows being opened from the outside.
Southern horse barns are often designed as a long shed with an outside covered aisle. Each stall opens onto the aisle by means of a dutch door—a door split side to side. By opening the top half, the horse has plenty of light and air. But in bad weather and at night, the top half is closed—the horse has no window and little ventilation.
Except for the situation when a horse is recovering from surgery and requires quiet and darkness, it is part of the therapy for recovery that a horse who is confined to his stall has adequate light and ventilation. He will recover sooner if he can see what is going on outside his stall.
In northern barns, extreme weather is an important consideration in designing openable windows. Ideally, the window should protect the horse from snow, rain and wind even when opened. Barn windows which slide open or open to the inside cannot protect the horse from the elements and still provide ventilation.
No matter what form the individual stall window takes, in too many barns the window design is an afterthought during the design process. Windows become an expensive detail and are often reduced to the least costly size without much thought to the horse's well-being.
However, with the majority of windows used in permanent structures housing animals for this purpose, the windows are openable in only a single direction, i.e., about a generally vertical axis, such that when the window is open, any precipitation, dust or other debris, can be carried by the wind into the structure housing the animal through the open window. Further, when these windows are closed, while precipitation and debris are prevented from entering the structure, ventilation is significantly reduced as the window prevents any movement of air between the interior and exterior of the structure.
Other prior art windows have been developed that include mechanisms which allow the window to move along separate axes, such as a horizontal axis and a vertical axis to enable the window to provide ventilation even in inclement weather conditions. Examples of these types of windows are shown in Lalagüe U.S. Pat. No. 3,667,162 and McHeffey U.S. Pat. No. 3,911,621, which are herein incorporated by reference. However, with these types of windows, the pivoting mechanisms necessary to move the window in the various directions involve many interlocking and moving parts, making the mechanism expensive and difficult to service.
Therefore, it is desirable to develop a window for an animal-housing structure that provides the ability to prevent precipitation and other debris from entering the structure while simultaneously enabling sufficient ventilation of the interior of the structure. To do so, the window should be independently movable in generally perpendicular directions using separate pivoting mechanisms that are of simple and inexpensive construction. The window constructed to achieve these goals should also be easy to operate and maintain.